


Felix Navidad

by erelis



Series: Seasonal Shorts [4]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-23 18:59:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17085887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erelis/pseuds/erelis
Summary: Tis the season. And Isaac is practically overflowing with goodwill toward men.





	Felix Navidad

A cursory glance into the room revealed Sam sitting straight-backed on the edge of the couch with an array of firearms spread across the top of the coffee table. Occupying the corner of the table nearest him was a bottle of cleaning solution, a small kit of tools, and a collection of rags and brushes arranged in a disgustingly organized fashion. The disassembled parts of one of Sam's old battle rifles took up the space directly in front of him. He had the upper receiver in his hands at the moment and was in the middle of methodically cleaning it, like his life depended on getting every millimeter of it spotless.

Closing his mouth on the question he'd been about to ask, Isaac leaned against the doorway, folded his arms across his chest, and settled in to watch. It was far from a novel sight. Sam cleaned his guns at least once a day. More, if they saw use or he caught Isaac, in his disapproving words, "fooling around" with any of them. He'd been doing it for so long—since the war, when it was necessary to clean the mud and gunk off their equipment on a daily basis or risk a lethal malfunction—that he could get the job done in under an hour, but he often drug it out for two. Even though it seemed like a colossal waste of time to linger over the job, Isaac never asked him why the fuck he did it like that. Privately, he suspected that the familiar motions served some kind of bizarre, meditative purpose.

Because if anyone would enjoy that stupid _sit quietly and empty the mind_ bullshit, it was Sam.

Of their own accord, Isaac's eyes drifted down the slope of Sam's neck, bare save for the wisps of hair that had escaped the confines of his ponytail, and came to rest on his shoulders. Those too were on display, thanks to the sleeveless shirt he was wearing, and although he wasn't doing anything terribly strenuous, the shift of muscle that accompanied every movement made a compelling case for the benefits of stopping to appreciate the view.

So compelling was that case that Isaac stood there for the better part of two minutes, still and silent and utterly unobtrusive. Eventually restlessness crept up on him, breaking his concentration. And once he was free of the captivating spell he'd inadvertently gotten tangled in, he remembered what he wanted.

"Hey—"

"No," Sam said firmly, cutting him off before he could get started.

"Would you stop that?" Isaac snapped back, more disgruntled that he hadn't even bothered to look up from what he was doing than at being interrupted. "Let me fucking finish first."

Sam didn't sigh. Isaac was watching him. He would have noticed the heavy exhale if he had. But his very existence _exuded_ it, even as he finished cleaning the piece in his hand, set it down, and picked up another one as seamlessly as if he wasn't also— _barely—_ holding a conversation.

"What?"

Isaac stared down his nose at him, unimpressed by the weary wariness he heard in that one word. Sam still didn’t look at him. His attention was focused on the gun like it was the only thing in the world. Briefly, Isaac entertained the notion of sweeping everything off the table and throwing it out the window. They weren't staying in the nicest part of the city. By the time Sam got over the shock of his precious guns unceremoniously disappearing right before his eyes, the street below them would be empty and all the petty criminals within a kilometer radius would have top of the line additions to their arsenals.

One of those pistols was Isaac's, though, and he was kind of attached to it. Just last week he'd used it to kill a brazen hussy who'd thrown herself at Sam during a visit to one of the nearby bars. Letting it fall into the hands of a dumb punk who'd probably drop it into the river before the end of the month seemed like too cruel a fate for such a useful weapon. No, there was no help for it. He was going to have to tolerate Sam's inattention.

Shoving the daydreams aside, he asked, "You wanna go to Wu's Christmas party?"

That finally got Sam's attention. He looked up and met Isaac's eyes. "What?"

 _Is there an echo in here or are you just going deaf?_ "Mason Wu," Isaac said slowly, enunciating every word. "Having a Christmas party. Do you want to go or not?"

Sam was staring at him like he'd started speaking Yonhetian. "When is it?"

"Tomorrow. Starts at fifteen hundred."

Despite acting like fun was a foreign concept that only happened in Sangheili fairy tales, Isaac was sure that Sam knew what a party was. He had to know. He avoided them too diligently to convince anyone that he was doing it by accident. So this moa in the headlights routine he was trying to sell as genuine bewilderment wasn't working.

But Sam persisted. "Do we need to bring anything?"

Isaac rolled his eyes. "Well, it's a Christmas party, so I'm thinking we probably ought to get something for them."

Not that he cared if anyone thought they were rude for showing up without a gift. Being rude was the least of Isaac's concerns. But Sam was getting on his nerves. Uprooting him from his little love-affair with the guns and making him venture downtown to deal with the Christmas Eve shoppers scrambling for last minute gifts seemed like fitting retribution for being ignored.

Slowly, Sam set down the magazine well and the cloth he was using to clean it. Judging from his expression, he was girding himself for an extraordinarily unpleasant mission. "We're going to need to go shopping."

It took considerable self-control, but Isaac kept the gleeful, vindictive grin off his face. "So that's a yes?"

"Yes." Rising, Sam stepped out from between the couch and the table. "Get your coat. We've got a few hours before the shops close."

* * *

Between Sam insisting on putting on his stupid-ass concealer shit before they left and the increased holiday traffic, it took them about an hour to reach the shopping complex five kilometers away. Isaac had initially suggested they get one of those huge gift baskets filled with wine and novelty delicacies that seemed to be the go-to gift on TV whenever characters visited each other during holidays, birthdays, or unrealistic dinner parties, but Sam had vetoed it as unsuitable for the whole family. Mason, he had argued, likely wouldn't let the children partake in the alcohol and he thought it would be rude to arrive without a gift the whole family could enjoy. After a tense ten minutes arguing about whether the dumb kids mattered, Isaac had grudgingly offered a compromise: get the gift basket for the adults and toys for the kids.

Which was how they'd ended up standing in the middle of a large toy store.

"How old are they?" Isaac asked, looking at the nearest aisles with an increasingly hysterical kind of hilarity.

The whole place looked like it had been spawned from the sort of hallucination that came with severely overdosing on exotic narcotics. Everything was brightly colored, ridiculous looking, and in many cases, difficult to guess what the purpose was. And if that wasn't daunting enough, it was filled with harried parents trying to keep their shouting brats from running completely amok. It was the type of establishment that neither of them ever visited and maybe it was just Isaac's imagination, but he was pretty sure that they stuck out like a pair of Sangheili in the middle of a human yoga class.

"Nearly six," Sam replied, managing to sound both exhausted and exasperated at the same time.

"How nearly?"

"Two months." Isaac caught him slanting a glance his way. "Does it matter?"

Was it his imagination or did Sam sound a trifle hopeful? Thoroughly committed to being the bearer of bad news, Isaac shrugged. "Hell if I know."

There were just too many toys. On their way into the store, they'd passed _four entire aisles_ filled with nothing but action figures. After that, there were the aisles of board games, a whole stuffed animal _department,_ rows upon rows of vehicles, dolls, clothing and furniture for the dolls, houses for the dolls of varying sizes and complexity, outdoor toys, indoor toys, indoor-outdoor toys, toys to take in the water, toys that worked in zero-g, toys organized by colony, toys for the children of the various species that had once made up the Covenant, and pointless toy versions of common household items. And if that wasn't bad enough, there was a slew of weird shit that Isaac didn't even know what the fuck it was supposed to _be,_ much less what kids were supposed to do with it.

 _What kind of spoiled brat needs this many fucking options?_ The thought no sooner crossed his mind than a woman came around the corner of one of the aisles pushing a cart practically overflowing with toys. Behind her came a boy of an indeterminate age, brandishing a stuffed lizard in one hand and screeching about how he needed to have it and wouldn’t be happy unless mom got it for him.

Shaking his head, he glanced up at his equally unenthusiastic partner. "Any of this look fun to you?"

"No," was Sam's immediate, stone-faced reply.

Isaac could have easily mocked him for that. The jokes practically made themselves. So many, in fact, that he probably wouldn't have been able to pick just one if he decided to loose them on the world. But for once, they were in total agreement on what constituted fun and what didn't. It was a strange place to be and he wasn't sure how to handle it.

Out of curiosity prompted by the unexpected common ground, he found himself asking, "What were your favorite toys when you were a kid?"

Not that it was easy to imagine Sam as a child, much less as a fun-loving child happily playing with toys like a normal tiny human. Isaac had tried a few times over the years and the best he'd ever managed to conjure up was the image of a somewhat less muscled yet still dour and unpleasant teenager with no friends who thoroughly enjoyed spending all of his time studying and exercising. _Probably didn't even have toys._

Sam didn't even pause to think about it, though it would have been over two decades ago. Without so much as blinking, he said, straight-faced and serious, "An antique revolver, a decommissioned plasma grenade, and a machete."

It was a far cry from the _nothing_ Isaac was expecting to hear and for the life of him, he couldn't figure out if Sam was actually serious or if this was one of those depressingly rare dry jokes he so infrequently injected into conversations. Because it could go either way, and neither his matter-of-fact tone nor his unhelpfully blank expression were giving any clues as to which was the right interpretation. Making his dilemma worse was that now he was imagining Sam being trained since birth to be an unstoppable killing machine—a legitimate possibility, given how strong he was, how proficient he was with everything he ever used as a weapon, and how his mind worked—and as an inevitable byproduct, he was getting turned on in the middle of a toy store.

And that was the last fucking place he would have ever suspected he’d have an inappropriate thought. With all the loud-mouthed brats running around, the only fantasies he should have been having were of knifing the little shits and stealing their parents' money in the ensuing commotion. Not shoving Sam down onto that gargantuan stuffed bear and fucking him in full view of everybody.

"What about you?" Sam asked, oblivious to his internal crisis.

 _What?_ It took him a few seconds to reboot his brain — if they killed everyone in the store first, they could fuck on the bear without anyone watching them, thereby relieving Isaac of the task of having to kill them _after_ for the unforgivable crime of seeing Sam naked, loot the corpses once the afterglow faded, _and_ get Wu's kids toys for free—and remember what they were talking about.

"Markers. I used to draw on the walls." Isaac grinned. "My parents hated that." And he'd not yet learned that stealing their cars opened up a whole new world of ways to infuriate the fuck out of them. "And the gúta that lived in the forest near the house."

Judgment was clear in Sam's eyes. "Living creatures aren't toys."

"I spent months trying to make that thing my friend!" Isaac shot back indignantly.

The judgment gave way to a disbelieving frown. "You?"

This was the problem with people who weren't from Reach. None of them had any fucking imagination. "It was huge. Figured if I could befriend it, I could take it to school with me and it would stomp on all the kids I didn't like." So many dreams crushed and not all of them casualties to the Great War. "I tried offering five credits first."

Obviously. Like he'd go through the trouble of trying to befriend something if buying it off would work. Sam knew him better than that.

"We aren't getting them anything alive," Sam told him severely.

Isaac sighed. "You are no fun." He gestured to nightmarish hellscape around them. "You fit right in here."

Maybe it was the implied threat that Isaac would leave him there or the constant barrage of terrible Christmas music and screaming children wore through his patience, because it wasn't long before Sam steered them back to the stuffed animal department. There, he chose two plush toys at random and hustled them toward the registers, not even pausing when he slapped Isaac's hand away from a woman's purse. Deprived of a few seconds' thrill, Isaac spent the whole checkout process—a torturous fifteen minutes at the back of an abysmally long line—glaring murder at him. It was only after they'd left the store that Sam offered an olive branch.

"Why don't we stop at Morrison’s on the way back and get something fun?"

Knowing that it could be a trap, Isaac suspended his reaction until the important question could be asked. "For us or the kids?"

"Both."

Perking up mid-sulk, he smiled. " _Now_ you're talking."

* * *

Other stops stood between them and the fun one, though Isaac could agree that the worst was behind them. Their next took them into a liquor store, where they got a few bottles of wine for Wu and his wife and a few more for themselves. It was busy, though not intolerably so, and since they knew what they wanted, they were in and out in a quarter of the time they'd wasted at the toy store. A short detour back to the car to drop off their purchases interrupted their progress, but there was a bakery nearby that allowed them to pick up one of those gift baskets full of desserts that Isaac was still insisting was a necessary ingredient of a perfect party visit. Because the baskets were packed with lavish desserts, they got one for themselves and an additional box full of pastries.

The tedious part of the mission accomplished, they were all set to get into the car and leave the complex when Sam decided that they needed clothes suitable for the party. They had plenty of suits and appropriate accessories, but guns and clothes were the only material objects that ever seemed to matter to him. It was hardly surprising that he wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to get something new. And because Isaac liked getting new clothes too, he didn't object to the deviation from the plan.

They headed directly to the large luxury department store at the far end of the complex, bypassing other, less expensive shops without sparing them a glance. It was another area where their preferences aligned. Neither of them would be caught dead in cheap, poorly made attire.

As they crossed the boundary into the rich section of the complex, the atmospheric difference was palpable. Shoppers were more subdued and dignified, the decorations in the stores were elegant instead of gaudy, and even the music was better. It was enough to make Isaac wonder why they hadn't started there. Rich people had kids. Surely they could have found something halfway appropriate without needing to venture into the toy hell.

Inside the department store, Sam led them directly to the suits. Isaac rarely had reason to argue against seeing Sam in a suit, but when he lifted one from the sparsely filled rack—soft black material and an intricately cut collar that would need to spend a few hours at the tailor and set them back a substantial amount of money for requiring emergency work on a holiday—he realized a painful truth: he was going to have to talk him out of it. At least insofar as the party was concerned. Isaac was on board with him getting it for the hell of it.

"This should do," Sam told him, already starting to look for a shirt that would go nicely with it.

 _I could be looking at him in that all day tomorrow,_ Isaac told himself mournfully. _Instead I’m going to have to wait._ Because some things were more important than a stupidly hot man looking absolutely scorching for a handful of hours. They were. He was sure they were. _And we're going to see the Wus. I'm not wasting that on the Wus._

"It's a Christmas party," Isaac said, interrupting Sam's perusal of jewel-colored dress shirts that would look far too nice on him. "Not a funeral. It's gotta be festive."

Ignoring the frown and huffs of disapproval, Isaac dragged him over to a less formal area and looked around for something a bit more colorful. There were long-sleeved shirts and bland sweaters in muted tones in every direction, but none of them fit the bill. Undeterred, he kept searching, knowing that he'd find what he sought eventually. A few minutes later, as he emerged from a cluster of pullovers, he spied his quarry.

Arranged like an art exhibit were half a dozen racks filled with sweaters so gaudy and ugly that only filthy rich people would be stupid enough to shell out credits for them.

"No," Sam said firmly, coming up behind him.

"Yes!" Selecting the first eyesore he saw, Isaac lifted up a white sweater covered in huge embroidered red flowers that were edged in red and gold sequins. He assumed they were flowers, anyway. From a certain angle, they kind of looked like leaves. "It's festive, Sam."

"I'm not wearing that."

"Are you trying to win an award for Youngest Curmudgeon or what?" It was a rhetorical question. Isaac knew that that was exactly what he'd be doing if such a thing existed. Hell, maybe it did exist on Sam's homeworld. Sure would explain a fuck of a lot. "It's this flowery thing or that one with the fat man that lights up over there."

Helpfully pointing it out, Isaac watched Sam's face as he followed the direction of his finger. He could see the moment when he spotted the thing by the open revulsion he saw flood his expression.

"Absolutely not." He must have realized that he was going to be forced into something horrendous if he didn't take an active role in selecting a sweater, because he made what looked like a truly desperate grab for the least visually offensive one there. It was a dark, muted green and it had a group of large white animals on the front that sort of looked like fat, thick-legged dogs. "This will do."

Isaac scowled at him. "Fuck's sake, you're boring." Except he was pretty sure that the dog-things were made of somewhat furry fabric instead of yarn and Sam was so busy trying to avoid looking at the sweater too closely that he hadn't noticed. _Might be some entertainment there after all._ Not wanting to draw attention to it until after it had been purchased, he huffed dramatically, like it was killing him to agree to it. " _Fine._ "

Unlike Sam, _he_ wanted to be as obnoxiously garish as possible. To that end, he plucked from the rack a red sweater with a big tree embroidered on the front. It was bedecked with ugly ornaments and inset with tiny lights that, according to the tag on the sleeve, lit up when a small button on the inside of the garment was pressed.

"Must you?" Sam asked, looking as pained as he sounded.

"Wu said festive. You want to show up at the party looking like you hate Christmas, that's your prerogative."

That earned him some openly suspicious scrutiny. "Since when do you care what Mason says?"

Isaac snorted derisively. "Since never. I care about _parties_ . And the alcohol we're bringing. I'm just relaying the terms to you since _you_ act like he's god's gift to the universe."

It was Sam's turn to scowl. "No I don't."

"No? What do you call last week, then?"

Because he was eyeing him for telltale signs of lying and evasion, Isaac saw the moment abject confusion gave way to understanding. "An invitation to the bar," he said flatly.

"Uh huh."

"To which _you_ were also invited."

"Because he knew damn well I'd show up and crash your little affair before either of you got to enjoy it."

Sam sighed so hard it was a wonder he didn't blow over the display of gift ideas they were walking past. "Isaac."

He gave him a flinty, narrow-eyed glare. "I'm watching you."

Rolling his eyes, Sam reached out, placed his palm flat against the center of his lower back, and steered him toward the registers. "You're impossible," he muttered, sounding significantly less aggrieved by both his antics and the need to make that statement than his word choice suggested.

Casually canting his head sideways like some interesting piece of merchandise caught his eye, Isaac allowed himself a smugly satisfied half-smile.

* * *

They stopped in at the gun shop on their way back from the shopping complex with an hour to spare before closing time. One of the owners, a gruff veteran of the Great War who never mentioned his rank but always spoke with such calm authority that Isaac strongly suspected he'd held a position far above his own meager designation, was messing around in the rifle case when they walked in. Without looking up, he gave them a grunt of friendly acknowledgment and left them to their own devices.

Neither of them _needed_ new weaponry, but that didn't prevent Sam from picking out a sniper rifle and Isaac from choosing eight knives of varying length, a handgun, and a Sangheili energy rifle for the hell of it. By the time they'd moved on to analyzing which items were appropriate for small starter kits, the second owner had come out of the back and the four of them entered into a spirited debate on the finer points of wholesale slaughter. In the end, they compromised: a pair of slim, razor-sharp daggers that could be easily hidden under pant-legs, two derringers small enough to comfortably fit into tiny hands, and an ample supply of ammunition.

"We're the best shady fake uncles a kid could ask for," Isaac remarked, after they'd stowed their purchases in the trunk and were back in the car, creeping down the traffic-clogged road toward their apartment. "I wish someone had given me weapons when I was a kid."

They were moving so slowly that Sam didn't hesitate to take his eyes off the road to slant him a wry glance. "I thought you enjoyed stealing them."

Snorting, he dismissively waved that away. "Hello. Do you know me at all? I would have gotten to steal _more._ "

Sam didn't laugh. That would've been too close to an outward expression of fun. But he did make a soft sound under his breath, which Isaac knew from long experience was one of those totally-not-a-chuckle things he liked to pretend he didn't do. "Don't tell that story at the party."

"Mmmnope. No promises."

"In front of Mason or Megan," Sam continued, as if he hadn't said anything.

Isaac stared at him. "You do realize that watching Wu try not to have an apoplectic fit is an integral part of the entertainment, right? If I'm not tempting him to violence in front of his family, what's the fucking point?"

He sniffed. It failed to mask the slightly louder not-a-chuckle. "This is why Megan doesn't like you."

"Megan doesn't like me because she knows that she'll never get that fantasy threesome with you while I'm alive," he corrected knowingly.

Credit where credit was due, at least Sam immediately rallied against the idea. "That would never happen. Besides, she doesn't—"

Although his attention had—oh so conveniently—shifted back to the view beyond the windshield, Isaac gave him a withering stare. "Sam."

He sighed. "That was a joke. It was mentioned _one_ time."

 _The only joke is how fucking oblivious you are._ "Uh huh."

Sam darted a sideways glance at him. "You know they would never—"

"Are you really going to tell me, _me_ , the expert on people who want to fuck you, that they wouldn't be down to try it? Not even once?"

"Yes," he replied sincerely, with all of the stubborn, hopelessly deluded confidence of a dimwit who looked in the mirror and failed to see what absolutely everyone else did just because of a few subjective imperfections.

Clicking his tongue in disgusted disappointment, Isaac shook his head. "You're lucky you're so hot and deadly."

Another deep sigh echoed through the car.

"Anyway," he continued, picking up the conversation from where Sam had so unceremoniously dropped it. "She doesn't like me around her kids because she's afraid I'm going to corrupt them. Which is stupid as hell. I've already corrupted them." He smiled to himself, a little dreamily, a lot proudly. "Once they kill the babysitter, she'll see."

"Isaac…" he started, only to apparently realize that any attempt to chastise him was doomed to fail. "I don't know what to do with you."

"You want a list?" Leaning sideways, Isaac rested his head on Sam's shoulder and gave him the most charming smile in his repertoire. "I have a list. We can work our way down it." Not waiting for a response, he reached over between Sam’s legs and cupped his cock through his pants. "I can start by blowing you."

Despite the way Sam nudged his hand with the inside of his thigh in a blatant order to remove it, Isaac felt the faintest twitch against his palm.

"Too public for you?" With traffic moving so slowly, it probably was. Sam had Opinions about privacy and what constituted it. Happily, Isaac was nothing if not versatile. "I can jerk you off instead."

He could feel him getting harder, but ever the bane of all things fun, Sam replied firmly, "Just wait until we get home."

Isaac gave him a gentle squeeze, absently weighing his actual interest against his stubborn insistence on being a buzzkill. He could probably push it, just ignore the grumbling until Sam got over himself and got into it, but if he did that, chances were greater that it would put the kibosh on more sex later. If he gave in and waited, sitting in traffic would be annoying and boring, but Sam was predictable enough that Isaac was confident he could capitalize on the goodwill generated by being agreeable and get more than one round out of him. Instant gratification versus a minor delay for the sake of greater satisfaction—making decisions sucked so much.

" _Fine_ ," he muttered irritably, withdrawing his hand and sitting upright in his own seat. "Your _Galaxy's Most Miserable Killjoy_ title remains unchallenged for yet another day."

Without looking at him, Sam reached over and patted his knee in a conciliatory gesture that was only slightly patronizing. "I'll make it up to you."

Refusing to dignify that with a response, Isaac ignored him. But the gamble had ultimately paid off—he knew exactly how they were going to be spending the rest of the night—so really, who was the real winner in the end?

* * *

Due to the rather strenuous _festivities_ lasting well into the night, Christmas morning dawned quite late. At least for Isaac, who woke up buried under a mound of blankets, his mouth dry and his body just the right degree of pleasantly sore. Yawning, he turned his head and to his bleary-eyed disappointment, found that the other side of the bed was depressingly empty. Tempted to go back to sleep, he rolled over onto his other side and spied the mug sitting on the nightstand right about the same time as his brain finally registered the scent of coffee filling the room. Levering himself up onto his elbow, he reached for it and took a wary sip, expecting it to be icy cold. Instead, it was warm, just a degree or two shy of being able to burn his tongue.

After a few more sips introduced enough caffeine to his system to galvanize him into true wakefulness, Isaac hauled himself out of bed, drug on a pair of boxers, and mug in hand, went in search of his absent partner.

He found him sitting in the living room in a worn t-shirt and cotton pants, carefully wrapping a nondescript white box in red and green paper. There were half a dozen already wrapped packages stacked up next to the couch, along with the gift basket of gourmet delicacies. Isaac surveyed the scene from the doorway for a moment, slightly off-balance by the weirdly domestic tableau, then took a bracing swallow of coffee and sauntered in.

"How many of those are for me?"

Sam didn't look up from folding a corner of paper with surgical precision. "None."

Isaac glared at him over the rim of the mug, coffee-related goodwill evaporating. "I'm taking the shit I got for you back."

The threat didn't have the desired effect. In fact, it didn't have any effect at all. "It's almost noon," Sam told him, a little too patiently to be an actual rebuke for sleeping so long.

Gasping dramatically, Isaac pressed his free hand against his bare chest and staggered backward a step. "And you aren't dressed yet? Who are you and what have you done with the real Sam?"

Finally, _finally_ , he looked at him. Although that was probably less to do with the theatrics and more to do with the fact that he'd finished with the box. "Really," Sam replied flatly, giving his nearly naked body a pointed once-over.

Isaac arched his eyebrows and waved his hand at himself. "It's Christmas, Sam. What kind of monster would I be if I deprived you of such delectable eye candy on this of all days?"

He didn't look impressed by his magnanimity. "You said the party starts at fifteen hundred. That means we need to leave by fourteen and these gifts weren't going to wrap themselves."

"No," Isaac agreed as he wandered over and sat down next to him. "But it wasn't like I was going to help with them anyway." He could've helped, but that was a lot of effort for people he didn't give a shit about and it wasn't like any half-assed, piss-poor attempts were going to make it past the quality check Mr. Anal-Retentive Perfectionist would've given them. “Should’ve just left it all in the bags and saved yourself some time.”

“That wouldn’t have been very festive,” he said mildly.

“Oh, so _now_ you care about that?”

Humming noncommittally, Sam plucked the mug from his hand and polished off the rest of the coffee. Isaac watched him in contemplative silence until he finished his drink, then snatched it back and deposited it onto the coffee table. He was up and straddling Sam’s thighs in an instant, settling his weight onto his lap and pushing him back into the couch. He let him do it, too. No complaints, no struggle, not even a half-hearted grumble.

“You set me up,” Isaac realized, though the revelation did nothing to dissuade him from pushing Sam’s shirt up out of the way and running his hands over his abdomen.

“We can do something else if this isn’t to your liking.” Empty threat or insincere offer; either way, it was so meaningless that Sam didn’t even bother to pause for a second after he’d finished speaking to pretend that he meant it. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he put it to Isaac’s throat and gave him a sharp, stinging nip.

Isaac retaliated by raking his fingernails up over his chest. “Would’ve been more comfortable in bed. That’s all I’m sa—” He interrupted himself with a breathless, half-laughing yelp as Sam took hold of his hips and rose smoothly to his feet.

Automatically, Isaac wrapped his legs around his waist, taking some of his own weight. Blindly side-stepping the pile of gifts like they weren’t there, Sam navigated them out of the living room and into the bedroom. Ever an industrious multi-tasker, Isaac shimmied the t-shirt up his torso and over his head. It got hung up on Sam's elbows, but with it largely out of the way, Isaac’s hands had plenty to occupy themselves with until they reached their destination and Sam unceremoniously chucked him onto the bed. He grabbed onto the shirt and took it with him, tossing it onto the floor as his back hit the mattress.

Pushing himself up onto his elbows, Isaac took in the sight of a shirtless Sam approaching and then crawling up onto the bed toward him. In that moment, months of planning went right out the window. "You wanna ditch the party and spend the day in bed?" he asked hopefully.

"No," Sam replied quietly, as he crept up and over him like the best kind of predator. "But we've got a few hours to kill. Ought to be enough to tide you over until we get home."

"Yeah." Smiling, Isaac hooked his arm around Sam's shoulders and hauled him down on top of him. "Now you're talking."

* * *

"Sam?" Wu's eyes widened comically as he opened the door and found them standing on his doorstep. Isaac watched him take in the large canvas bag obviously filled with gifts that Sam was carrying and the gaudy as fuck sweaters, surprise shifting to bewilderment. "What are you doing here?"

"We're here for the party," Sam answered easily, evidently not quite cottoning on to the reason for his surprise. "I hope the gifts aren't too much."

"Party?" Wu echoed, glancing over his shoulder and meeting Isaac's eyes. Very slowly, with malicious deliberation, Isaac smirked at him. _Gotcha, motherfucker._ Wu's eyes narrowed. "What party?"

From where he was standing, he could see the faintest tightening of Sam's shoulders as he figured out that something wasn't right. Carefully, just barely avoiding making it a question, he replied, "The Christmas party."

A minor commotion occurred behind him, preventing Wu from answering. Seconds later, Megan appeared at his side, casually dressed in jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt.

"Sam!" She smiled, evidently not yet at the appropriate angle to see Isaac and his twinkling monstrosity of an outfit lurking behind him. "What a nice surprise. What are you doing here?"

Benevolently deciding to spare him further awkwardness, Isaac elbowed him out of the way and stepped in front of him, smiling his most charming smile. "We came for the party, of course." He brandished the gift basket at her. "Merry Christmas."

Her pleasant smiled faltered at the corners, tipping down into a scowl before she caught herself. "Isaac." She didn't take the basket, possibly because she thought it was going to explode, and because he wasn't interested in holding onto it anymore, Isaac shoved it unceremoniously into Wu's arms. Clearly no longer convinced that it was a nice surprise, she slanted a displeased glare at her dipshit husband. "Mason didn't tell me we were having a party."

"Between me and you," Isaac said in a loud conspiratorial whisper, "I think he wanted it to be a surprise."

Wu's expression became so pained that it looked as though he was fighting against the sudden onset of severe constipation. Behind him, Sam was radiating suspicious disapproval so strongly that Isaac could practically feel it beating against his back like the strong summer rays of a sun. It took every ounce of his considerably weak willpower not to click his tongue in disappointment. _Gullible idiot._ Seriously, if he wasn't so hot and dangerous, Isaac didn't know what he'd see in him. _Like Wu would ever invite_ me _to something instead of you._

Yet despite the realization that he'd been bamboozeled, Sam's voice was mild, almost overtly amused and friendly, when he offered, "I certainly was surprised."

It was a successful conciliatory gesture for Megan. The tension around her mouth eased as she stepped out of the doorway and gestured them inside. "Well, come in. We were just getting ready to start making dinner."

On the other hand, as a rebuke for him, it did absolutely nothing to dampen Isaac's smug satisfaction. He let him know it, too, as he tipped his head back, smiled brightly at the flat look Sam was giving him, and nodded to the doorway. "Come on, dear. Let's give the little rascals their presents."

He didn't get very far. Wu caught him by the forearm in a vice-like grip as he sauntered by, bringing him to a halt in the middle of the foyer. "Go sit down a while, Sam. Gates and I need to have a little chat."

Sam shot him a brief look, his face inscrutable, then nodded, relieved their reluctant host of the gift basket, and walked away. They stood there in silence as the hallway cleared out, Isaac with an expression of innocently polite interest and Wu failing at not looking furious, and then stood there some more afterward, like someone might unexpectedly pop back in The urge to tap his foot was strong, but somehow, Isaac heroically resisted.

Wu must have finally been convinced they weren't going to be interrupted, because he turned to him and hissed, "What are you doing here?"

"Celebrating the holidays at my friend's party," Isaac told him blithely.

"There is no party." The faintest shake accompanied that low statement, not quite hard enough to jostle him. Isaac met Wu's eyes and benignly lifted his eyebrows. Ever so gently, Wu released his arm. "It's Christmas. A day to spend time with my family. Not _you._ "

Feigning hurt, Isaac frowned at him. "What's the matter, Mase?" He dropped the confused tone, replacing it with something dark and deadly. "Not _ready to be_ _Wued_?"

The quote didn't hit immediately. Wu just stared at him, perplexed. "What are you...?" And there it was. Recognition. Understanding. His expression tightened. "Are you kidding me right now?"

Isaac didn't bother dignifying such a stupid question with a verbal response. He simply stared him down.

From the look on his face, Wu appeared to be in the midst of internally debating the merits of trying to strangle him. "That was a _mistake!_ "

What was it with people being unable to admit that they did something wrong? Isaac did shit all the time that pissed people off and _he_ was perfectly capable of owning up to it. Everybody else, though, they always had some dumbass, wholly unbelievable excuse.

"You mean like how I'm always sexting your wife by mistake?" He shook his head, clicking his tongue in feigned sympathy. "I know, man. _M_ egan. _S_ am. They're so close together that it's really hard to tap the right one when I'm scrolling through my contact list in the mood for romance."

"If you read the damn conversation, then you know I wasn't trying to sext _him_ ," Wu replied tightly.

"Yeah?" If he wasn't so irritating, Isaac might almost pity him for being so stupid. "Because there's this thing called testing the waters. You know, throw it out there. Ha ha, laugh it off when you don't get the reaction you want."

"I don't want to fuck Sam!" he said loudly, throwing up his hands. And then froze when he realized his son was standing a few meters down the hall, staring at him.

Having enough situational awareness to hold a furtive conversation _and_ maintain a sense of his environment, Isaac was well aware that the boy had been there for the last minute or so, watching them curiously. He lifted his eyebrows judgmentally as Wu turned back to face him. Honestly, the man was a bounty hunter. Either he relied on luck in the field and had no instincts to speak of or he chose to ignore them at home. _So sloppy. I don't know what Sam sees in you._

"I'm married," Wu said quietly, leaning closer so that his voice wouldn't travel beyond them. "I love my wife. I'm not going to cheat on her with anybody. Just because I _talk_ to Sam doesn't mean I want in his pants. Jesus Christ."

 _Idiot._ "You know I can tell when you're lying, right?"

"I'm not lying!" his voice rose again.

Isaac just looked at him, a critical mixture of disappointment and disbelief. They'd known each other for quite a while now. Long enough for Wu to figure out that Isaac _always_ knew when people were lying about the important things. And it didn't get more important than Sam.

"You've never had friends, have you?" Wu shook his head in disgust. "You seem to have no idea how it works."

Now he was getting bored. And Little Wu Junior had disappeared into the living room, no doubt intending to monopolize all of Sam's attention for the duration of their visit. This little interlude was rapidly losing what minor entertainment value it had.

"You seem to have trouble understanding that Sam is _mine_ ," Isaac told him softly. "I've killed people for less than flirting with him, Mason. I've killed their whole families. You feel me?"

Wu's eyes widened. Though he managed to keep his voice down, it was obvious he was furious as he demanded, "Are you seriously standing in my house threatening my family, Gates?"

Isaac snorted in professional disdain. "Threats are for people with no follow-through." He stepped in closer, until they were practically nose to nose, and tapped his forefinger against Wu's chest. "We're partners, aren't we? The three of us? So because we're partners, I'm doing you a favor. I'm showing you where the line is." His magnamious smile held an edge. "I don't care if the two of you are friends. Sam likes having friends. I mean, insomuch as he likes anything. What I _care_ about are thieves trying to take what's mine."

"An accident that we turned into a joke isn't—"

He gave him another poke, this time none too gently. "Never. Again." The smile vanished as he met Wu's eyes. Yet for all the deadly ice in his eyes and the sharpness of his expression, his tone was deceptively mild as he finished, "Or surprise holiday parties aren't going to be a problem for you anymore."

They stared at each other in silence, Wu probably trying to take the measure of his sincerity as Isaac looked unblinkingly back at him. A young child's laughter filtered out of the living room and echoed against the hallway walls. Eventually, inevitably, Wu sighed.

"Just go in with everybody else," he said, defeat heavy in his voice.

Smiling blandly, Isaac patted him in the place he'd been poking and took his leave. A few quick, light-footed steps took him into the living room, where he surveyed the situation. Little Wu Junior was seated firmly on Sam's lap, regaling him with some juvenile story of fuck knew what. Megan was heading back into the kitchen through the second doorway, evidently having just deposited a tray of cheese and crackers on the coffee table. Junior's twin sister was loading up a cracker with a tower of cheese cubes that grew ever more precarious the higher it got.

Because Sam was occupying the recliner and Isaac wasn't feeling quite possessive enough to unearth him from underneath the loud child, he sauntered over to the nearby loveseat and sat there at the end of it. Wu appeared in the doorway, eyed him suspiciously for a moment, and after some silent communication with Sam that made Isaac want to carve his face off with a dull knife, he went to help his wife in the kitchen.

Feeling the weight of Sam's gaze on the side of his face, Isaac glanced his way. He looked considerably more relaxed than one might assume him to be with his personal space being invaded by an unruly urchin the way that it was, but there was a question there in his expression that he clearly expected to have answered. Throwing him a bone, Isaac shook his head, code for _I'll tell you about it later._

"Uncle Isaac." The soft, serious voice drew his attention away from his partner and settled it firmly on the little girl standing in front of him. She met his eyes, then carefully held out the cheese tower. "I made this for you."

It wobbled only a little when he took it. She was a dexterous thing, he had to give her that. "I eat this, I'm not going to have room for dinner," he cautioned her, cranking up the bullshit.

She gave him a look so level that it was eerily similar to one of Sam's. "It's your favorite kind of cheese."

 _How the fuck does she know that?_ "How the fuck do you know that?"

Soft chastisement for his language wafted over from the recliner. "Isaac."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh please. You've heard that word before, right?" When she solemnly nodded, he gave Sam an arch look. "See?"

"Daddy says fuck," Junior piped up helpfully. "He pretends we don't hear him, but we do."

Maybe the little bastard wasn't as insufferable as he'd thought. "Listen to your little buddy," Isaac said, flicking a finger at the kid. "And stop being a curmudgeon, Sam. It's Christmas." Because he could feel the unrelenting stare of Junior 2.0, he plucked a few cubes of cheese off the makeshift tower and tossed them into his mouth.

And tried not to choke from his laughter as he heard Junior say with childish severity, "Don't be a curmudgeon, Uncle Sam."

* * *

For not expecting to have any guests that evening, there certainly wasn't any shortage of food for dinner. The Wus weren't bad cooks, either. Not on par with Sam, of course—nobody could whip up something as good as those little fried envelopes of spicy meat and cheese he occasionally made when he was in a good mood—but it was lightyears ahead of anything Isaac himself could have made. Two kinds of meat, half a dozen different kinds of fruit and vegetable side dishes, and enough dessert he actually liked that he ended up lightly kicking Sam's leg under the table until he got the message, cleared his throat, and asked if they could take some leftover pieces of pie and a plateful of cookies with them when they left. True to form, neither Wu could deny Sam anything; they not only agreed, they packed up extras.

When they'd first took their places around the table, there'd been an almost palpable tension hanging over the room as the adult Wus uneasily waited for Isaac to do something violent and bloody. But as time passed and he failed to live down to their expectations, spitefully going insofar as to keep the profanity to only a few mild utterances of _damn_ and _hell_ , they began to relax. They never dropped their guard entirely, they weren't completely stupid, but by the end of dinner, Isaac could only feel the faint hint of wariness because he was actively searching for it.

The Wus did most of the talking, either amongst themselves or to Sam, who was—for him—in a chatty mood and held up his end of the conversation with actual words instead of grunts and significant looks. Either because they liked him or because instinctive juvenile contrariness told them that their parents wanted to them to make as little contact with him as possible, the kids made an effort to engage Isaac whenever he was quiet for too long. And because he could act the part of jovial pseudo-uncle and had vindictive spite for days, he responded to their overtures by practically ignoring the rest of the table and telling them a number of stories from the war. All perfectly PG, of course, boringly devoid of killing and violence and heavy on random details about the Covenant aliens he'd encountered.

Junior seemed especially taken with the huragoks and halfway through a story about convincing one of them to fix a busted computer, he turned to his parents and loudly declared that he wanted one for next Christmas. Megan gave Isaac a rather impressive stinkeye for provoking the demand, while Wu just sighed and tried to explain to his bratty spawn that decent people didn't give sentient beings as gifts. Sam pointedly kicked his ankle under the table, likely trying to emphasize their conversation yesterday. Refusing to take the bait, Isaac ignored him and leaned toward Junior, mock-whispering a few suggestions for how to bribe a huragok into becoming his friend.

By the time the food was gone and everybody adjourned to the living room for the kids to open their unexpected presents, the adult Wus had seemingly made peace with the unwanted intrusion on their family time. Or maybe they'd both just developed eye-strain from all the suspiciously wary side-eyeing. Either way, they stopped surreptitiously glancing at Isaac every couple minutes, though he strongly suspected that that would all change once the gifts were unwrapped.

"I have a present for you," 2.0 told him solemnly as he reclaimed his spot on the loveseat.

"You do?" _Bet that went over well with the folks._ "What is it?"

"Be right back."

She left the room as Sam finished dutifully distributing the packages, exhibiting none of the enthusiasm for presents that Isaac, in his severely limited experience with children, had come to expect. Her brother, on the other hand, dove into them like he'd never gotten anything in his life. Which, judging from the massive pile of unwrapped shit arranged around the decorated tree in the corner of the room, wasn't at all the case.

Rutching around trying to get comfortable, Isaac watched them all carry on with a significant lack of interest. Family holidays weren't his bag. He'd experienced some of them as a child, back when there'd been enough family members alive to make the effort worth making, and he had vague memories of enjoying the lights and presents, but those days were _long_ gone. Most of his relatives had been killed in the war, either off fighting it during his adolescence or when the Covenant had come to Reach, and the few that had escaped the glassing met tragically mundane demises that had cost him a minor fortune to secretly arrange.

And besides all that, the whole gift-giving shtick had lost its luster after he'd grown up. As an adult with more money than he knew what to do with, he could buy whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. He didn't need to wait for some arbitrary day to hopefully receive it from someone else. Not that getting free shit from someone wasn’t nice, but it wasn’t something he _cared_ about.

Junior was opening one of his presents and his parents were watching him do it with polite, somewhat wary overprotective interest. Recognizing the box as the one containing the stuffed… whatever it was, Isaac didn’t pay much attention. Instead, he studied Sam, who had installed himself back in the recliner as soon as the presents were distributed and was still looking faintly uncomfortable about being involved with the proceedings. Like he hadn’t quite managed to reconcile feeling like an intruder on the family’s time together with the reality of the fact that the Wus _liked_ him and didn’t actually mind him being a part of their holiday.

 _I’ll never understand how someone so intelligent about everything else can be so damn stupid about people._ Isaac knew that Sam had had a fairly large family as a child. It wasn’t like he’d been raised by wolves out in the middle of the wilderness. And he did perfectly fine whenever he interacted with random strangers. But put him around people who legitimately liked him and he acted like he’d never met a human before, much less had any clue how to behave around them.

Sam glanced sideways and met his eyes, arching an eyebrow in an obvious question. _What is it?_

Isaac lifted his own, then let a smile twist the corner of his mouth in an expression that contained multiple meanings. _You’re entertaining when you’re uncomfortable. Megan’s going to flip when she sees the rest of their presents. I bet they wish there was a polite way to kick me out that didn’t include you._

The faint compression of his lips to prevent anything remotely like a smile from happening to his face and the accompanying eye-rolling suggested that he accurately understood all of them.

“Elephant!” Junior exclaimed, enthusiastically brandishing the floppy thing. Isaac was no zoologist, but he’d seen pictures of elephants a few times and he was pretty damn sure that whoever had made the toy had never actually seen one. “Thank you! I love elephants, Uncle Sam!”

Judging from the hint of surprise Isaac could make out on his face, that was news to Sam. But he forced the tiniest of smiles, managing to make it look only a little awkward. “You’re welcome.”

Lured into a false sense of complacency by the stuffed mutant elephant, the Wus relaxed into the idea of unscrupulous mercenaries giving their children gifts just in time for Junior to open up the box containing the gun.

“That’s a toy, right?” Wu tried diplomatically, while Megan sat forward and snatched it from the kid's hand as he pointed it with feigned menace at his father.

Sam looked offended by the question. “Of course not.”

“ _Sam,_ ” Megan started, in the most chastising tone Isaac had ever heard her direct at him. “Why would you—”

“Uncle Isaac.”

Disappointed to have to take his eyes off the entertainment now that it was getting good, Isaac reluctantly shifted his attention to 2.0, who’d returned from wherever she’d gone and was standing next to the arm of the loveseat, holding out a gift bag.

“Whatcha got there, rugrat?” Isaac asked, trying to keep his voice down so he could enjoy the indignant scolding Megan was giving Sam for being, as she put it, disturbingly irresponsible.

“Your present.”

Certain it wasn’t going to be anything _fun_ , like a weapon or a bomb or a bottle of rare poison, Isaac took the bag and gingerly pushed apart the tissue paper. Inside was a lump of indeterminate grey fluff and a tuft of purple. _What the fuck is this?_ He shot her a questioning glance, but instead of snatching it back and proclaiming it the wrong gift like he was expecting, she nodded. Dipping his hand into the bag, he pulled out a soft, squishy bird-looking thing. It had a long neck, long dangly legs, and an oval-ish body with furry flaps that were clearly supposed to be wings.

“It’s a... bird?” Isaac said dumbly, turning it over in the hope that maybe he missed the significance of the thing and a closer inspection would reveal it.

“Moa,” she clarified. “Daddy says you’re from Reach and that’s why you are the way you are.”

Either Sam’s dressing down had ended when he hadn’t been paying attention or the instinct that had gotten the assembled adults through the war had recognized that something infinitely more dangerous than giving a child an unloaded gun was occurring too close for comfort because the room had become so silent that Isaac could hear the distant barking of a neighbor’s dog. He glanced up to find four sets of eyes on them: two of varying degrees of disturbed, one gleefully curious, and one carefully composed and level.

“Yeah?” Isaac calmly asked her, though he looked directly at Wu as he continued, “How’s that?”

“Batshit crazy,” she pronounced, her expression and tone so bland it was impossible to tell if she was truly oblivious to what she was doing or if she knew damn well and was enjoying every chaotic second of it.

Still eyeing the father in question, Isaac arched an eyebrow and inquired smoothly, “Daddy says that, huh?” A muscle twitched in Wu’s face, like he was psyching himself up to try to redirect whatever catastrophe was brewing. Perversely curious to see how the drama played out unobstructed, Isaac cut that off by leaning forward and, pitching his voice so that no one but the girl could make out his words, murmured, “Being a little crazy’s okay. Makes life interesting. Sanity’s for boring chumps like your dad.”

He kept her parents in his peripheral vision, watching them sweat as their imaginations ran rampant with exaggerated horrors. There wasn’t much he could count on in life, but the Wus always thinking the absolute worst of him was one constant that never let him down. But 2.0 didn’t gasp or scream or run away or whatever the hell they were expecting her to do.

She giggled. And then turned to Wu and said, with an air of matter-of-fact certainty, “You’re a chump, Daddy.”

 _That’s another point for me and zero for you, asshole._ Wu must have figured out that he was losing the battle too, because he glared at him. “Isaac—”

His daughter cut him off to tell Isaac seriously, “His name’s Leon.”

“Leon the moa?” _Where do kids get this shit?_

She nodded. “Now you won’t have to be sad and miss your home anymore. You can take a piece of it with you wherever you go.”

Even if everyone in the house was abruptly struck dead, it probably would’ve still been louder than the absolute silence that slammed down over the room.

They didn’t talk about Reach. _Nobody_ talked about Reach. Everybody in the business knew not to talk about it. Not to Sam. Certainly not to Isaac. In fact, Sam and Isaac didn’t even talk about it with each other unless they had no choice, and in those incredibly rare instances, they did it obliquely, without mentioning what it had cost them.

The Wus looked openly alarmed, like they were afraid to breathe. Isaac glanced at each of them in turn, then slid his gaze over to Sam. There was tension in him now that hadn’t been there a moment before, a tightness at the corner of his eyes and a wary readiness to the set of his shoulders. He was alert. Battle ready. Prepared to react to anything.

Isaac eyed everyone again, met Sam’s eyes briefly, and finally focused back on the source of all the drama. He was pretty sure he could _hear_ the Wus holding their breath and had to catch himself on the verge of heaving a regretful sigh. It was such a shame to have to disappoint his audience.

“Thanks, kiddo.” He clapped her on the shoulder with an easy smile. “But don’t worry about me, yeah? Between your Uncle Sam and now Leon here, I won’t have time to be sad.” Then, because he just couldn’t help himself, he winked at her. “No promises on the batshit, though.”

Laughing, she went up on her tiptoes and threw her arms around his neck in a stranglehold masquerading as a hug. Coughing, he patted her lightly on the back, letting the spiteful pleasure he got from the Wus’ obvious discomfort at seeing their beloved daughter embrace him eradicate most of the awkwardness he felt about the unexpected show of affection.

“Listen,” he found himself saying, this time pitching his voice so low that none of the others would be able to hear anything at all. “Anything ever happens that you can’t handle, somebody does some shit that hurts you and you don’t know what to do, you call me. Any time. Tomorrow. Twenty years from now. Doesn’t matter when. I’ll take care of it.”

He couldn’t determine whether she understood what he was saying and he had no idea if she was even remotely capable of comprehending a tiny fraction of what he was offering, but her grip on him tightened nonetheless. “Okay.”

Isaac gave her another pat on the back, trying not to wheeze. “Now open your presents. Spoilers, I got you a knife like one of mine. Go play with it. Run around the house and freak your mom out. Don’t stab your brother in anything vital. You know the drill.”

With a wholly unanticipated kiss on the cheek, she released him and ran off laughing to investigate the presents that had been laid out for her. Sam was watching him. He could feel the weight of his gaze and after a moment that he deliberately dragged out just to be an asshole, he met his eyes and smiled innocently.

After all, what was a little shit-stirring between pseudo-friends?

* * *

To Isaac’s disappointment, the rest of the evening passed without bloodshed or associated mayhem. Megan was Not Impressed by their gifts, but after Sam calmly reminded her that the galaxy was a dangerous place and it wouldn’t hurt to teach the kids how to defend themselves before another war broke out, Wu tentatively got on board with the idea. Between the persuasiveness of her husband and the object of her not-so-secret fantasies, she eventually relented and agreed that Wu—and _maybe_ Sam and Isaac if the children could behave and Isaac could comport himself like a civilized person for the duration—could teach them how to use the weapons properly and above all, safely.

Another point of minor discontent was the fact that crashing the Wu Christmas wasn't entirely inconvenient for them. Although they hadn't wanted them to be a part of the actual day, they _had_ gotten Sam gifts that Wu confessed he'd been tasked with bringing over to them tomorrow. Because Isaac was sitting there staring at them, they tried to pretend that the gifts were for both of them, but he knew better than to buy it. The bottles of wine were of a vintage that Sam preferred and the leather jacket clearly wasn't meant to be shared by them.

 _Joke's on you,_ Isaac thought smugly as he watched Sam try it on. _That's more of a gift to me than it is to him._ Sure, Sam would be the one to wear it, but _he_ was the one who got to look at him in it.

The kids also got him gifts: a taco making kit that contained a variety of exotic spices and a motherfucking sombrero. That stupid straw hat didn’t just fill Isaac with gleeful delight, it proved that no matter how stringently their parents tried to keep them far away from him and his bullshit, the twins liked him enough to pay attention to the nonsense they heard him say. Sam accepted the acknowledgement of the heritage he liked to pretend he didn’t have with more grace than he did whenever Isaac brought it up, only looking a little pained at the sight of the sombrero. But when he caught him grinning his way unapologetically, he rolled his eyes and scowled at him so severely that it was almost possible to hear the vehement _no_ he was projecting.

Foolish of him, really. That level of opposition just moved _getting Sam to wear the sombrero_ to the top of Isaac's list of life goals. In response, he shook his head and clicked his tongue at him. _It's like you don't know me at all._

Although he didn't actually _want_ to be there, he was prepared to hang around and obtrusively foul up the Wus’ family night until the wee hours of the morning. Sam, however, reached his limits of social interaction early and rooted him out of the loveseat around 2000. They said their goodbyes, Sam solemnly and Isaac smirking like an asshole, and then suffered through the round of hugs the kids doled out. Megan looked to be moving in to give Sam one as well, but halfway there, she caught sight of Isaac giving her the evil eye and stopped before she reached him.

Sam herded him to the car as soon as they got free of the house, side-stepping his attempts to yank the sombrero out of his hands, and waited until the passenger door was shut firmly behind him before unloading the gifts into the backseat and getting in.

"Don't," he said firmly, catching Isaac mid-twist around to fetch the thing.

"It's not like it would fit on your big head in here anyway," he returned defensively, slumping back in his seat empty-handed. Which was true. He couldn't force it onto Sam's head in the car. But once they were _out_ of the car, it was going to be an entirely new ballgame. And he was playing to win.

"I'm not wearing it. Ever."

"Yeah?” For all that Sam could be a hard-ass, he was still occasionally susceptible to guilt trips. Isaac laid it on as thickly as he could without being disgustingly obvious about it. “You really going to hurt the feelings of those poor kids? After all the lunch money they saved up to help you reconnect with your roots?"

Sam glanced at him as he pulled out of the parking space. "How connected are you to your roots?"

Crossing his arms over his chest in mock indignation, Isaac told him archly, " _Nyald ki a seggem_."

Without missing a beat, the smug polyglot bastard replied, " _Később_."

 _Asshole._ "I hate you," Isaac muttered, glowering at him.

The venom just bounced off of him. "You can learn Spanish."

Isaac rolled his eyes. "And you can have fun with life, but do you? _No_."

"It isn't difficult," Sam continued, ignoring him.

"Neither is having fun."

Despite the bickering, the silence that settled over them then was a comfortable one. Isaac leaned his elbow against the door and peered out through the window at the city as it flowed by. It was true. He _could_ learn Spanish. And every so often, he'd get a bug up his ass to make the attempt. But it never stuck longer than a few days. Outside of infrequent necessity for their work, Sam rarely spoke it and when he did, Isaac could usually glean the meaning without too much difficulty. With so many other more interesting things vying for his attention and without any actual need, he just couldn't keep up with it.

They were nearly back to their place when Sam asked curiously, “Why did you tell me they were having a party tonight?”

Cocking his head, Isaac side-eyed him judgmentally. “Why did you believe me?”

“Isaac.”

 _Oh for fuck’s sake._ It was ridiculous that he was making them have this conversation. Isaac knew he knew the answer. Sarcastic exasperation was thick in his voice when he replied, “Would you have said yes if I’d asked you to crash their Christmas?”

“No.”

 _Big fucking surprise._ “There you go.”

All the tryptophan from their large dinner must have been making him dumb as fuck. After a beat, Sam started, “Why—”

Because he was acting like such an idiot, it was tempting to let him waste his breath and keep going, but Isaac was running out of patience. “Wu values time with his stupid family, right?”

That got him a look. “Obviously.”

Isaac sniffed. “He needed to be reminded of what it feels like when someone tries to steal what’s most important to him.”

“Care to elaborate on that?” The bland neutrality in his tone made it perfectly clear that Sam knew what he meant.

And he said as much. “You know damn well what I mean.”

He confirmed it with a quiet, “Some things can’t be stolen, Isaac.”

 _You sure about that?_ He could have challenged him outright, but that was a path down which he didn’t want to go. Isaac was sure that he wouldn’t like where it led. “Missing the point, Sam,” he retorted, hoping to steer the conversation back to firmer, less treacherous ground.

In a tone that said he knew damn well what he was doing and was only willing to humor him because it was Christmas and goodwill toward men was nominally the thing one was meant to have on this particular day, Sam asked with exaggerated patience, "Which was what?"

With an expansive gesture toward the world beyond the windshield, Isaac said lightly, "It's Christmas. I thought he'd appreciate the gift of waking up and _not_ finding that his family'd been murdered in their sleep." Sam glanced at him, blindly making a turn into the parking lot of their building. Isaac met his eyes and shrugged carelessly. "What can I say? I'm a nice guy like that."

* * *

Laying in wait on the other side of the wall, Isaac listened to the faint sounds of Sam putting the leftovers away. If it had been up to him, that shit would've been left on the counter for the night and dealt with in the morning. But Sam was nothing if not a miserable killjoy and insisted on puttering around like the fate of the universe relied on completing a few asinine chores.

He heard the soft _thump_ of the refrigerator door closing and the light tapping of a pair of shoes turning in a different direction. Sensing his quarry approaching, Isaac repositioned his grip on the sombrero and tensed. A moment later, as the footsteps came ever closer, he silently exhaled.

A second passed. Then another.

A shadow crossed the threshold between the kitchen and the living area.

 _Three. Two. Now!_ Springing forward with all the lethal intensity he normally reserved for assassinating unsuspecting targets, Isaac swung his arm up.

And came to an abrupt halt a few pathetic centimeters shy of depositing the hat on top of Sam's head.

"Don't. You. Dare," Sam said quietly, menacingly enunciating every word as he dug his fingers into the muscle of Isaac's forearm.

Refusing to take the coward's way out, he stood his ground and glowered at him, straining against the iron grip. It was a futile endeavor that was repaid by the vice-like hold growing tighter and tighter until one of Sam's fingertips hit a nerve. Isaac's fingers spasmed uncontrollably and went numb. The sombrero fell to the floor, landed on its side, and crookedly rolled into Sam's foot. Without looking at it, he casually kicked it away.

"Unless you're planning to do something fun with it, I'm gonna need that hand back," Isaac told him helpfully, smiling like his pinkie wasn't starting to twitch and the numbness wasn't creeping up past his elbow.

Sam gave him the flat, unimpressed stare of a man who had no intention of doing something fun with anything. "Are you going to stop it?"

Isaac blinked, confounded. "Uh, no. Of course not. Have you met me?"

Having reached an impasse, they stared at each other. Waggling his fingers didn't encourage the blood to flow back into them, but Isaac gave it a half-hearted go anyway. Then he did it again, more emphatically, when Sam continued to refuse to release him.

He blew out his breath. "Just forget about the hat."

That sounded like the beginning of a compromise. Isaac cocked his head, curiosity overpowering the arm situation. "Generally speaking or are you offering to give me something else to do?"

Just like that, Sam let him go. “I thought you might want to unwrap your gift,” he replied simply.

 _Wait, what?_ Isaac didn’t bother trying to conceal his surprise. “You actually got me something?”

Sam gave a low, affirmative-sounding hum.

It was unexpected and therefore suspect. It was possible that it was a trap. “What?” he asked warily.

In answer, Sam spread his arms wide.

 _Oh._ The numbness was receding from his fingers, leaving in its wake the obnoxious pins and needles tingling that he ordinarily hated. But in this moment, with Sam _offering himself_ to him like a fucking gift, it was the last thing on his mind. _Fuck me._

Sliding forward, Isaac crossed the arm’s length of distance between them and ran his fully functional hand appreciatively over Sam’s chest. “Just what I always wanted.”

Although he said it with a smirk and a predatory purr, deep down in the dark recesses of his soul where self-reflection feared to tread, he meant every bit of it. Refusing to acknowledge that unfortunate bit of sentimentality, he scratched absently at the soft fluff that made up the fuzzy dog-things on the front of the ridiculous sweater. “I didn’t get you anything,” he confessed, not actually feeling guilty about that but strangely not _not_ feeling guilty about it either. “For real.”

Sam looked at him like he was an idiot. That wasn’t unusual. What he said, on the other hand, was. “Yes you did.”

“Uh, no.” Isaac shook his head, confused. “I didn—”

Cupping his hand around the side of his neck, Sam crowded in against him and with the heel of his palm, nudged Isaac’s head back as he tipped his own head down. “Yes,” he repeated pointedly, speaking the words against his lips. “You did.”

There were _way_ too many feelings going on now. He needed to put a stop to all of it. Pronto.

Hooking his arm around Sam’s shoulders, Isaac tangled his fingers into his hair. “Less talking, more kissing,” he muttered, punctuating the demand by yanking him into a deep, savage kiss that left him almost breathless by the time they came up for air.

 _Almost_.

“And fucking,” he managed to get out as he was angled backward into the wall. “Lots more fucking.”

Sam chuckled, low and velvety smooth. “So shut up and unwrap your damn present already.”

And because even Sam deserved a Christmas miracle once in a while, he did.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story came from a stupid joke thing I wrote a few years ago where Mason tried to sext Megan and accidentally sent the opener ( _Ready to be Wued?_ ) to Sam.
> 
> Find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/griffonfarm) & [Carrd](https://griffonfarm.carrd.co).


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